priestery

English

Etymology

From priest +‎ -ery.

Noun

priestery (usually uncountable, plural priesteries)

1. (often derogatory, obsolete) Priests collectively; the priesthood.
   • 1649 October, John Milton, Eikonoklastes. In Answer to a Book Intitled, Eikon Basilike, The PORTRAITURE of his SACRED MAJESTY in his Solitudes and Sufferings, Preface:

     What greater argument of disgrace and ignominy could have been thrown with cunning upon the whole clergy, than that the king, among all his priestery, and all those numberless volumes of their theological distillations not meeting with one man or book of that coat that could befriend him with a prayer in captivity, was forced to rob Sir Philip and his captive shepherdess of their heathen orisons to supply in any fashion his miserable indigence, not of bread, but of a single prayer to God?

References

• “priestery”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.